The Word of God in English

2018-01-14

When people talk about only using the King James Bible, most people do not understand why it is big deal. They will just say, “It’s just a translation!” When they say that, they show that they do not understand the whole issue.

God’s Word is Preserved

First, God can speak all languages, because He created them all (Genesis 11:1-9). God also promised to preserve His Word (Psalm 12:6-7). I wrote about these issues previously. If God can speak every language, and preserve His Word, we should not doubt that God can, and has, preserved His Word throughout the world not only in Greek and Hebrew, but also in other foreign languages. Since English is the lingua franca of the modern world, we would expect that English would be one of the languages in which God would preserve His Word.

Iterations of the Bible in English

Before the King James Bible, there were several English Bibles that were published, and the New Testaments were translated from the same family of Greek manuscripts.

By the time the King James Bible was translated, many men, many of which were persecuted for their work, had gone before the King James translators and produced very good works in those translations. The King James Bible did not come out of nowhere; the translators utilized the original languages as well as these English translations. The result was something tried and true in which we can have faith.

The King James Bible was also translated during the rise of the English empire, and it became the Bible used wherever English was spoken.

Modern Translations from a Different Source

Most of the modern translations of the New Testament, however, were translated from completely different Greek manuscripts that were discovered in the nineteenth century, and were considered “older.” There are many differences in these manuscripts, including missing verses and passages that affect doctrines.

This is not about the translation itself; the source of the translation is different in these modern Bibles.

Conclusion

I have concluded that the King James Bible is the only Bible you would want to use. I am in the minority, and many good Christian people that are used of God use modern translations. But because of all the discrepancies in the new versions with subtle changes, I have put away all the other versions.

Before I had come to this conclusion, I had read through the entire Bible in three modern versions a total of six times. When I started reading the King James Bible, there definitely was a difference. It felt like I was reading a totally different book, and reading the Bible for the first time. If we believe the Word of God changes people, we do not want to mess with this issue.

Let me conclude with an analogy of a glass of water. We want our glass of water to be as pure as we can make it. If the modern version were a glass of water, we may be fine (depending on what we are reading), or we may get botulism. Why gamble?